Pages

Monday, July 31, 2017

Your president, Kelsey Hazzard, here. I'm back from my family vacation, which was lovely, and a good time for self-care. I'm well-rested and ready to dive back into activism!

The Consistent Life Network will hold its 30th anniversary conference this weekend at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. The theme is "Bridging the Life/Peace Divide," and in this awful political climate, I can't think of a more rejuvenating and hopeful place to spend my weekend than among these peace-loving, reasonable, and genuinely kind advocates. I will speak at a Saturday afternoon breakout session alongside Catholic author Tony Magliano, which should provide an interesting opportunity for dialogue.

Also Saturday, Students for Life of America is organizing its second annual Pro-Life Generation Sidewalk Day. This event encourages young people to stand on the sidewalks outside abortion businesses, offering the mothers going in a last chance to change their minds and the resources they need to confidently choose life. They will hold a telephonic training tomorrow for all who are interested, but you must sign up in advance.

Finally, today is the deadline to submit your life-affirming poetry, visual art, short stories, nonfiction, and other works to Rehumanize International's Create|Encounter contest! Winners will be published in the Life Matters Journal and presented at the Life/Peace/Justice conference in October. Details here. We can't wait to see what you come up with!

Also Snopes links to BabyCenter for accurate depictions of fetal development. Notice BabyCenter's photo is basically the exact same picture as WebMD's.

Fetal Development Facts: At 9 weeks, the fetus is over half an inch (WebMD) to nearly an inch (BabyCenter), which is basically the size of the penny (0.75 inches). But unlike the "photo" from EarlyAbortionOptions.com, the 9-week fetus has fully formed eyes and fused eyelids. There are newly forming ears, nose tip, and "well-formed" arms and legs with visible fingers and toes. The heart has divided into four chambers and beats at about 170bpm, detectable by Doppler. Teeth have started to form. Organs are starting to work. The brain has cerebral hemispheres and measurable brainwaves. Jaw bones and the collar bone begin to harden. Limbs can move, the neck can turn, hiccups begin (also detectable by ultrasound).

One SPL member, Kristin Monahan, called this clinic about the misinformation on their website. According to Kristin, the woman on the phone asked several times if Kristin was trying to get an abortion, and when she said no, the woman simply said the info on their site was accurate and hung up.

At a time when CPCs are being accused of "misleading" women by not endorsing abortion, we would hope the same standard for accuracy would be applied to pro-abortion sites like EarlyAbortionOptions.com, which is clearly misleading women into believing the fetus basically looks like a dust bunny.

Friday, July 14, 2017

Hey, everybody, Secular Pro-Life president Kelsey Hazzard here. Twenty-nine years ago tomorrow, the U.S. government arbitrarily decided that I could no longer be legally dismembered!

Okay, so birthdays can be a little fraught for a pro-life activist. They shouldn't matter as much as they do. Still, tomorrow is the anniversary of the day I first came face to face with the family members and friends who mean so much to me, and I think that's worth celebrating.

If you'd like to celebrate with me, here are four things you can do that would make my (birth)day:

Donate to a federally qualified health center (FQHC) that serves low-income women regardless of their ability to pay. These are the clinics that will benefit from a funding increase when Planned Parenthood is finally stripped of taxpayer money—but there's no reason we can't boost their budgets right here and now. Go to FundWomensHealth.com to support an FQHC near you.

Donate to Secular Pro-Life. We're a volunteer-run organization with no paid staff or physical office, so every penny you give goes to our programming.

Help Secular Pro-Life reach 20,000 likes on facebook by inviting a friend to our page. We're just 742 away!

I am about to embark on a few weeks of heavy travel, so blog posts will be few and far between. But don't worry—Secular Pro-Life's wonderful co-admins will keep the facebook page updated with the latest pro-life news and commentary. (Thanks, ladies!)

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Lately it seems like abortion proponents have fallen in love with pointing out what they see as a glaring hypocrisy in the pro-life position: that those supposedly pro-life types are only pro-life when it comes to a fetus, but hate the lives of those who are already born. You're not pro-life, they say, merely pro-birth. So let's call this "the pro-birth objection."

It's tempting move because like so many rhetorical tricks, it seems to easily settle the question. Why debate a pro-lifer when they don't even care about living people? But, of course, it is a trick. And a dirty one at that. And the use of such tricks must be called out.

One problem with the pro-birth objection is that it tends to assume that everyone who is pro-life people is a traditional political conservative who holds a whole suite of other supposedly non-life-affirming positions such as opposition to gun control and support of capital punishment. Of course, as supporters of Secular Pro-Life well know, those with a pro-life stance are not necessarily uniform in their other politics or beliefs. I'm pro-life -- how do you know I'm not against capital punishment?

Of course, many on the pro-life side do hold other traditionally conservative views, but then responses tend to get bogged down in the particulars of policy. If one is pro-life, shouldn't one be more compassionate towards refugees? Well, who says they aren't? And now we are off into the minutiae of the politics of the day.

But such policy debates ignore the bigger, more basic, problem with the the pro-birth objection. That underlying error is that it twists the word "life" in "pro-life" by ignoring its context. Everyone knows that the "life" in this specific usage means the life of the unborn person. It is not referring to the value of life in every single context. It would be absurd to say that you can't be pro-life and still condone killing someone in self defence. Likewise, a pro-lifer might defend killing in defence of one's country. Or physician-assisted suicide. Or killing animals for food.These are complex moral questions and, of course, they are all open to debate. But it's willful ignorance and gross over-simplification to that you're either in favour of life or you're not.

The reality of such moral questions is, to be sure, more complex. While I myself am both pro-life and opposed to capital punishment, I can see how support for capital punishment could be squared with the pro-life position. One could argue, for instance, that the unborn child has a right to life and has done nothing to forfeit it, whereas the murderer has given up his right to life by taking the life of another. As I say, I don't actually take this view, but I can see how a reasonable person could hold it without hypocrisy.

To show just how absurd the pro-birth objection is, imagine if the same trick were applied to the term "pro-choice." If we said one cannot be pro-life without being in favour of all life, we could argue that to be pro-choice we must be in favour of all choice. Everyone's right to choose anything, at any time. Thus, while some have argued that a pro-life proponent must support gun control because guns take away life, we might just as easily argue that one cannot support gun control if one is pro-choice. After all, owning a gun is a choice. How can you ban smoking in restaurants if you believe people have the right to choose? What about teachers who choose to beat their students? Are you in favor of choice or aren't you?

But of course, one can value choice when it comes to seeking an abortion and still, without hypocrisy, maintain that some choices may be constrained. Choice is not an absolute value. It must be evaluated in the light of the particular circumstance.

Monday, July 10, 2017

A few years ago, Bob Seidensticker, a Patheos blogger, wrote about an argument he called the Spectrum Argument. I wrote an article in response. Seidensticker just updated a response to me a few days ago, which you can read here. I'd like to respond to the points he's raised in his new article. To summarize his argument, there is no dividing line between "person" and "non-person". It is a spectrum, and the embryo begins as a non-person and eventually becomes a person once it reaches a certain developmental milestone, and this milestone is the number of cells that go into making up a human person. As he says in his original article,

But the vast difference in the number of cells only begins to define the vast difference between the two ends of the spectrum. At one end, we have arms and legs, fingers and fingernails, liver and pancreas, brain and nervous system, heart and circulatory system, stomach and digestive system -- in fact, every body part that a healthy person has. And at the other, we have none of this. We have...a single cell. In between is a smooth progression over time, with individual components developing and maturing. That's the spectrum we're talking about...Note also that the difference between a newborn and an adult is trivial compared to the difference between the cell and the 1,000,000,000,000-cell newborn.

He makes several comparisons. A brain with only one neuron doesn't think at all, which is a huge difference between it and the brain with one million neurons, which does think. There is a continuous spectrum from blue to green, but blue is not green. There is no objective dividing line between child and adult.

A refutation of his argument, generally

The argument can really be refuted right away. Seidensticker here completely ignores the fact of human development. Once we develop enough cells, these other structures don't mysteriously come into existence. They develop gradually: a heart develops at around 22 days in utero, arms and legs start to form around the second month, etc. Seidensticker says "this is the spectrum we're talking about," but in what sense is this a spectrum? The reality is we don't exist on a spectrum -- what is human is human from the beginning. It has a human nature which directs its development and grounds its ultimate capacities, and all physical parts of the embryo eventually develop into the adult. Blue may change from green on a spectrum, but green didn't start out as green -- it starts out as blue. A human doesn't start out as a non-human, it starts out as a human and remains human. The single-celled zygote is a fundamentally different entity than the sperm and ovum cells that went in to make it -- and from then on, there is a continuity of existence from the single cell zygote all the way through that embryo's life. The zygote doesn't go out of existence once the cell starts to divide, it develops along the path of human development. But Seidensticker never gives us any sort of argument as to why he believes humans develop on a spectrum -- he only tries to argue for it by pointing to other things that are spectrums and saying "see, they're the same."

Even if we consider Seidensticker's argument as an argument of personhood, he still has to argue for why personhood is a spectrum. This would commit him to a gradualist position, similar to the likes of Wayne Sumner, who believes that sentience (i.e. the capacity to feel pain) is what grounds personhood. However, while Sumner's argument from sentience makes sense (it is at least intuitively plausible that the reason it's wrong to kill someone is because they can feel pain, but of course, this position is open to several counterexamples), Seidensticker's doesn't. Seidensticker places the value-giving property on the number of cells the entity contains because of the differences between a single-celled zygote and a one trillion celled newborn. Of course, if the pro-life position is successful, then these differences are trivial because it's the same individual through all points in its development. After all, although I may be qualitatively different than an embryo (I'm older, I am presently rational, I can talk, etc.), I am quantitatively the same embryo that was in my mother's womb.

A response to Seidensticker's other points
But now let's turn to Seidensticker's other points. It's trivial, but I want to start out by pointing out how amusing it is that Seidensticker claims that conservatives are trying to get votes by making an issue out of abortion, when Hillary Clinton's campaign ran mostly on her support for abortion rights (and ultimately ended up losing the election). Donald Trump made a few comments but for the most part, his campaign was silent about the abortion issue. Was Seidensticker living in an alternate reality last year during the presidential campaign?

Cutoff line
The problem with Seidensticker's argument here is that since we are dealing with the life of a human individual, then we must be able to make a determination. One advantage that the pro-life argument has over the abortion-choice argument is that the pro-life argument presents a clear dividing line between non-human and human: fertilization. But abortion-choice advocates generally disagree over when the dividing line is. Is it when sentience is sufficiently present, as Sumner argues? When cortical brain activity is present, as David Boonin argues? Is it when the human is sufficiently rational, as Michael Tooley argues? And even if we can decide which one of these thinkers is correct, there's no clear dividing line at which point the developing human being attains personhood, under that conception of "person." It does not disprove Seidensticker's argument that he can't come up with a clear dividing line (to argue that it does would be to risk committing the sorites fallacy), but it is a disadvantage that it has as compared to the pro-life argument.

Potential

Seidensticker responds to my arguments simply: "No, an acorn is not a tree, it is a potential tree." "No, it is a potential brain." Seidensticker presents no new arguments, so I can only point him to Monty Python to show why this isn't an appropriate way to argue. The reality is that yes, the acorn is an immature oak because all of its physical parts will develop into the mature oak tree, and all capacities that mature oak will have are present in the acorn in a latent form (or it might be more accurate to say that it's not the acorn, per se, that is the same as the mature oak tree because the acorn actually contains the oak embryo, and that oak embryo is the same individual as the mature oak tree it will become).

Simply repeating "no it isn't" isn't an argument, it's contradiction.

Personhood spectrum analogy
Something similar to the acorn happens with the brain. Now, I'm not an expert on the brain or how it develops, but according to my research, a single neuron is not the brain itself, but the gray matter of the brain is made up of neurons. The neuron is only a potential brain in the sense that all the neurons will develop into the gray matter of the brain, but the gray matter and white matter must be present for the brain, itself, to actually function as a brain should.

Seidensticker tries to show why his brain analogy works by analogizing it to water. A single water molecule does not have the properties of wetness, fluidity, etc., but these are emergent properties that emerge once a sufficient amount of water molecules are present. Now, let's set aside for a moment that the concept of emergent properties is controversial among philosophers, Seidensticker seems to be conflating the development of the brain with the development of a human. The human being is a human person from the beginning because from that single cell develops everything that the human will eventually be and have (including the brain). However, from that single neuron does not develop the brain -- the neuron must be combined with other neurons in order to form the gray matter of the brain. This is the main, and important, difference between the development of the human and the development of the brain.

Seidensticker finishes off this section by asserting that the embryo is not a baby now but will be in the future. I don't believe I ever used the term "baby" in my response to him, but the unborn child can certainly be seen as a baby. After all, what pregnant woman tells people she's "with clump of cells", or is having a "parasite shower"? She's with child, and has a baby shower. The term baby can be used to refer to a lot of things, including an unborn child or child after he has been born. Many mothers still think of their adult offspring as their "babies." "Baby" does not describe a stage of development of the human being, so it is not technically incorrect to refer to the unborn child as a baby. But neither does it add anything to the pro-life argument to use that emotionally loaded term.

The vastness of the spectrum

For this next section, I'll simply respond to Seidensticker on a point by point basis:

1) Between a newborn baby, a teenager, and an adult, they have the following in common: a brain, a pancreas, skin, eyes, nose, bones, muscles, hands.

The problem is that these are all arbitrary commonalities. If I set a newborn and an adult down in front of me and ask, "raise your hand if you understand this command," how many will raise their hand? One. There are large differences between an adult and a newborn: the adult can engage in rational thought. The adult can read this article. The adult can use language with intentionality. The newborn can't do any of these things. To say that these are negligible differences would simply be an ad hoc defense of Seidensticker's argument. Yet none of these differences justify killing the newborn and protecting the adult. Why? Because the newborn is a human being and has all of these capacities the adult has presently inherently (i.e. latently), just as the human embryo/fetus is and has. In fact, just as a late-term fetus has. The difference between a late-term fetus and newborn are negligible (hence why philosophers like Tooley and Peter Singer support infanticide), but Seidensticker hasn't told us if he believes late-term abortions are wrong.

2) "The commonality across the spectrum is that they all have eukaryotic cells with Homo sapiens DNA. That's it." That's an important commonality. But there are others: the unborn embryo has a human nature (in other words, even at the single-cell stage, the zygote behaves exactly as all humans do that early in their development). The developing embryo also has all the capacities the adult will develop at a latent level. Human embryos develop the ability to have rational thought because they have this capacity inherently. Human embryos never develop the ability to breathe underwater because they do not have this capacity inherently.

3) "That's not something that many of us get misty-eyed about. Very little sentimental poetry is written about the kind of DNA in the cells of one's beloved." This is a non-point. I don't get misty-eyed when I think of homeless people on the streets. But that doesn't mean those homeless people are any less human or valuable because of it, and it doesn't mean I have any less of an obligation to help them. Just because I don't have an emotional attachment to the developing embryo does not give me justification to kill it. Humans are rational animals and should use their rational faculties to rise above their emotional, animal instincts.

What do we call the spectrum?

Here's where Seidensticker really seems to misunderstand my response to his spectrum argument. I fully concede that there are differences between a single-cell zygote and the newborn or adult it will one day become. But my response is philosophically nuanced and Seidensticker's argument conflates many ideas together and fails to make important distinctions. Of course there are differences, differences in size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency, between a zygote and an adult. But these are all qualitative differences and don't justify being able to kill the developing embryo.

So it's not about needing to "rename" the spectrum to show why the spectrum is a determiner of personhood. It's about no matter what name you give it, none of the differences Seidensticker fixates on are enough to justify killing the embryo in the womb.

Miscellaneous arguments

1) PETA: Seidensticker points to the fact that PETA uses their slogan, "a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy" and argues they are trying to "collapse the spectrum" between these animals. The problem is Seidensticker, again, never addresses why he thinks this is a spectrum at all. He seems to assume that everything is a spectrum. But why assume that animal DNA exists as a spectrum? Certainly arguing that a member of a different species, say comparing a dog with a fish, is a fundamental difference and not a spectrum. Yes, they are all animals, but in what sense does fish and dog exist on a spectrum? Perhaps Seidensticker would do well to define what, exactly, he means by "spectrum." But whatever he means, it is clear that human person is not a spectrum, it is an all-or-nothing thing. Either you are a person or you are not. Seidensticker has yet to refute the pro-life argument.

2) Evangelicals thirty years ago supported abortion: This is, again, irrelevant, but Seidensticker tries to save it by saying it's not irrelevant to people who use religious arguments in this discussion. Except that it still is irrelevant. What matters is the truth of the arguments, not whether the group, as a whole, have switched their positions.

Again, Seidensticker misconstrues human development by asserting humans develop along a spectrum and fails to take into account that what is human is human from the beginning. He fails to make several important distinctions which show his argument to be faulty. It's clear that Seidensticker's argument fails to do the work of justifying abortion.

Friday, July 7, 2017

Most of us have seen the insensitive pro-choice signs that people hold at marches and rallies. They say things like “abortion on demand and without apology” or “hoes before embryos.” These are the same people who call embryos cysts and fetuses blobs. I know because I used to be one of them. I used to talk about abortion as if it was an operation to remove a tumor. I thought it was ridiculous to be pro-life and I was convinced that only religious fanatics were against legalized abortion. Personally, I always thought having an abortion would be painful and scary, but when it came to the subject of abortion in general, I was okay with it. I didn’t consider unborn babies as real babies, and I thought it was a reasonable option for women who are dealing with trauma, or who just aren’t ready to have kids.

That was, until a few months ago.

I was several weeks late and almost certain that I was pregnant. I looked up what stage of pregnancy I would be at, trying to estimate how far along I would be, but what I found made me cry. I learned that at just eight weeks the embryo already has hands, and at seven, a brain. I saw how quickly embryos develop and realized... the pro-lifers were right.

I know that it may sound stupid to people who have known this all along, but hear me out. Since I was young, I heard pro-choice activists telling people that the facts of embryonic and fetal development advertised by pro-life groups are lies. They tell us that fetuses and embryos are lifeless blobs and that the only thing that matters is a woman’s choice. They tell us that pro-life is a religious movement for the backwards and the ignorant. They groom us to ignore fetal development and focus on societal issues. On top of that, they use peer pressure to make anyone who questions pro-choice feel less intelligent and non-progressive. I haven’t told anyone besides my husband that I’m pro-life because I know I would be relentlessly judged and labeled as “part of the problem.”

As a teen, I saw the pro-life billboards that say the heart starts beating at five weeks, and I thought it was just another lie. Now, I wonder why this plain and simple message doesn’t get through to people and why it didn’t get through to me. What I observed is that the subject is usually handled wrong because it’s rarely ever spoken about from a scientific standpoint. People don’t need to listen to philosophical or religious debates, because it doesn’t matter when anyone believes a life begins. It’s true that the vast majority of abortions occur in the first trimester—but even before eight weeks, the child has a heartbeat, a brain, and fingers and toes. In 2008, roughly 29% of all abortions in the U.S. took place between 8 and 13 weeks. If more people truly understood embryonic and fetal development and how rapidly the child develops senses and human characteristics, there wouldn’t be anything to debate.

I want pro-lifers to know that not all pro-abortionists are bad people. Most of them just don’t know a thing about prenatal development. When discussing abortion, try to focus on embryonic and fetal development instead of engaging in philosophical or moral debates. People don’t want to hear when you believe life begins or what you think is wrong because they will laugh in your face. Tell them that embryos have nervous systems; that fetuses can hiccup, kick, and stretch. Tell people the scientific facts of embryonic and fetal development that they’ve been taught to close their eyes to, and challenge them to look it up for themselves. Maybe they’ll change their minds too.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

On Saturday, I had the privilege of speaking at the National Right to Life Convention in Milwaukee. The convention is an annual event bringing together pro-life leaders from every state to learn from one another. This year's theme was "Keeping Tomorrow Alive." It was actually a three-day affair, beginning last Thursday, but due to work commitments I was only able to participate on the final day. Still, if the first two days were anything like the third day, it was a stellar convention.

Saturday morning opened with a panel discussion of euthanasia and assisted suicide, with a particular focus on how that's worked out in nations where it is fully legalized, like Belgium and the Netherlands. Short answer: not well. Formal reporting is poor, anecdotal reports indicate widespread abuse, and we now have the phrase "involuntary euthanasia," formerly known as murder. The panelists also discussed scholarly articles floating a "duty to die"—thankfully that is not the law anywhere (yet), but clearly they're testing the waters, and we need to be prepared to defend vulnerable elderly and disabled individuals.

Then we moved to breakout sessions. I attended the presentation by NRLC's Jennifer Popik, JD, on the progress of federal legislation. Obviously NRLC's strategy is confidential, but in broad strokes, she gave us a primer on the various procedural hoops pro-life laws need to jump through.

After lunch, there were more breakout sessions—including mine! My presentation on secular outreach was streamed live on facebook. You can watch the video here.

I also had the pleasure of watching the final round of NRLC's oratory contest. This is a program for high school seniors, who each crafted their own short speech on a topic related to the protection of vulnerable human lives. I was thrilled when my favorite contestant won. She was not only persuasive and poised, she also chose one of the most difficult topics: how the pro-life movement can support women who become pregnant as a result of rape.

The convention concluded with a banquet featuring keynote speaker O. Carter Snead, a law professor who brilliantly summed up the equal rights argument against abortion.

I can only hope that next year, I will be able to attend all three days. The 2018 National Right to Life Convention will be held in Kansas. Stay tuned for details!

Monday, July 3, 2017

[Today's guest post by Sarah Terzo is part of our paid blogging program. Sarah is a pro-life atheist, a frequent contributor to Live Action News, a board member of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, and the force behind ClinicQuotes.com.]

For a long time, the pro-life movement has been calling for the defunding of
Planned Parenthood. This is a worthy aim. Planned Parenthood is the largest
provider of abortions in the United States. They have been caught lying to women about fetal development and offering to protect sex traffickers at the expense of their underage
victims. An undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood in six
different states showed Planned Parenthood workers agreeing to cover up
statutory rape and send underage victims back to their abusers. And that
doesn’t even touch upon the lengthy investigation into Planned Parenthood’s
selling of fetal organs and body parts.

But in the long-term battle to protect the lives of preborn babies and
vulnerable disabled children and adults, care must be taken not to make one
step forward and ten steps back.

The health care bill currently being considered in the Senate, the Better
Care Reconciliation Act, does defund Planned Parenthood for one year. But other
aspects of the bill, as it stands now, can have a terrible impact on the issues
of abortion and euthanasia.

One part of the Affordable Healthcare Act that the new bill would repeal is
the mandate that insurance plans cover birth and maternity care. According to
CNN, the average cost of childbirth is $30,000. A cesarean section
raises the bill to $50,000.

The changes in the law will mean that at least 22 million fewer people will have health insurance coverage,
including maternity coverage. Millions more, who will keep their coverage in
other areas, will lose maternity coverage as well.

According to statistics gathered by the Alan Guttmacher Institute (which supports abortion), 73% of women who have abortions say that they aborted
because they could not afford a child. Pro-lifers have often said that if a
woman cannot afford to raise a child, she can place the baby for adoption. But as we
have seen, birth without insurance is very costly. Poor women, including many
single mothers, may be faced with a “choice” between spending $30,000 on a
birth (if everything goes right) or $400 on an abortion. If the adoptive parents are unable to cover that cost, the pressure this would
bring to bear on women would be enormous. There is no doubt that more women
would be pressured to “choose” abortion.

Pro-lifers have also spoken out, and rightly so, against euthanasia. Those
most vulnerable to euthanasia are the disabled and the elderly.

Over 6.2 million disabled people rely on Medicaid to provide
health care. The Better Care Reconciliation Act, as currently drafted, will cut Medicaid by billions of dollars. This will force state insurance
to cover fewer services. There have been multiple examples of insurance companies refusing to cover chemotherapy for
cancer patients, but offering to cover pills for assisted suicide. With so much
pressure to cut costs for disabled and chronically ill Americans, this will only
increase.

Currently, many elderly men and women in nursing homes are being paid
for by Medicaid. Medicare only covers skilled nursing care for 100 days. After
that, the only option for a great many elderly people is Medicaid, which pays
for long-term stays in nursing homes. This will be cut. What happens when
elderly people cannot live on their own, have no family to take care of them,
and have no way to pay for nursing home care? Such individuals would be at very
great risk for both voluntary and involuntary euthanasia.

And, as I’ve said, 22 million fewer people will have health insurance if the Better Care Reconciliation Act is passed.

I would like to share this story from a friend on facebook:

My sister ... died on March 23, 2008 following a brainstem stroke, locked-in
syndrome, and no hospital or rehab facility wanting to touch her because she
was uninsured (she had a new job and was 30 days away from qualifying for
benefits). Her medical costs for 1 week, post-stroke, were 1.2 million dollars
so the doctors said sorry, but—because she is 100 percent physically paralyzed,
yet 100 percent mentally alert and able to communicate by blinking her eyes—we
must videotape her blinking in agreement to our request to terminate life
support since she lacks coverage for alternative treatment. And to be sure,
they said, we'll videotape her doing this 3 times over as many days just to
cover our butts. The life support was terminated on Good Friday but unlike
Lifetime movie depictions, death did not come swiftly or without pain. Patricia
Ann Brown Medley, age 43, lingered until 11:07 p.m. on Easter Sunday, at which
time her soul left the earth where a handful of fellow inhabitants decided she
wasn't worth saving. Sleep well tonight if you find this acceptable.

Did Ann Brown Medley have a right to life?

Incidents like this will become more and more common if the health care bill
is passed without serious revision.

Adding to the number of suicides (assisted or not) will be some of the
millions of mentally ill people who will be taken off their medication. The
Senate health care bill has a clause that allows Medicaid in individual states to
stop covering mental health care in 2019. Ironically, the most mentally ill
people in the country are on Medicaid. Medicaid is given to those who receive
SSI disability benefits—people who have been so disabled they have never held
a job. Four million people have been scrutinized by the government and declared
so seriously mentally ill that they cannot work (and have never worked). All
four million would potentially lose all access to the medication that keeps
them stable. This includes over two million people with paranoid schizophrenia.
The havoc this would wreak on society (and in individual lives) would be
staggering .

Planned Parenthood should be defunded. Pro-lifers must insist on this. But
the defunding of Planned Parenthood must not be wedded to other policies that
will cause abortion and assisted suicide rates to skyrocket. If you call your
senators, tell them to defund Planned Parenthood—and to stop the terrible
health care cuts that will bring suffering and death to innumerable people.